by Phil Ford
A lot of them were nutters, of course – there were people who said they were witches and werewolves and some guy was on there a few weeks ago talking about how he had married a vampire.
Ianto listened to it occasionally, not that he was about to admit that to Andrew right now – and probably never to anyone in the team, either. And he had heard Abigail Crowe talk about Torchwood. People had heard the name; the police and the civil authorities were familiar with it – but no one actually knew exactly who they were or what they did. And that, of course, was always going to fuel talk. He had heard suggestions that they were some sort of black-ops outfit attached to the military, seeking out terrorist cells in Cardiff, and that was probably as close as anyone was ever going to get. For all Cardiff’s weirdness over the last hundred years or so, no one was ever going to come out and say they were the city’s answer to the Men in Black.
Even Abigail Crowe never said that. But she had hinted at it, once or twice.
‘You’re always around when something strange happens, aren’t you?’ said Andrew.
‘I have no idea. That would depend on how often something strange actually happens,’ Ianto pointed out.
Andrew shook his head and smiled. ‘Come on. The Official Secrets Act doesn’t apply in broken-down lifts. Everyone knows that.’
‘I wouldn’t know, I’ve never signed it.’
Andrew’s eyebrows rose above his red glasses like French windscreen wipers. ‘Really? So you’re not part of the government? So what are you, then? Who do you work for?’
The absolute truth was that Ianto didn’t really know. Torchwood had, of course, developed from the Torchwood Institute which was founded by Queen Victoria in 1879. He sometimes wondered if their pay cheques came from an office somewhere in Buckingham Palace. Maybe one day he, Jack and the others would all find themselves on the Honours List.
Most likely, posthumously.
Simon could tell that his partner was never going to get a straight answer out of the Torchwood guy.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘To be honest, I’m not interested in who you are, or what Torchwood is, but I think you do owe us some sort of explanation as to what’s going on here. And just what happened to that poor man’s wife.’
Ianto looked from Simon to Ryan, who, if he had heard a word of their conversation, made no sign of it.
‘All right,’ said Ianto. ‘There’s an alien in the building.’
He got no further than that because the elevator shook as if it had hit the side of a mountain – and the alien started to come through the roof.
TWENTY
The day that Ewan Lloyd met Besnik Lucca he had been moments from killing himself.
The trouble had started with the car crash. He had been at his office when the police showed up. He had been at his desk, immersed in figures relating to a major new construction project that one of the company’s clients had under way in the Bay. There was something about the finances for the project that troubled him, had been nagging at him for days, but he was damned if he could put his finger on it. Being an accountant was no different from any other job, sometimes you developed a sixth sense. A doctor could look at a patient, a mechanic could listen to an engine, and sometimes an accountant could look at columns of figures that seemed to make sense and know that in some way they didn’t. That was how he felt about the finances on the SkyPoint project. Something about them was wrong. He just couldn’t see what it was.
But the police officer that came through his door wrecked any interest he had in solving the puzzle.
Wendy and Alison had been taken to St Helen’s Hospital. The driver of another car had hit them at a junction. Wendy had only cuts and bruises; Alison was in intensive care.
The next week had been a fog to him and he had been lost in it. He had found Wendy at the hospital and they had held each other and cried until they both thought their hearts would shatter. And they had sat beside their fragile, bruised, broken daughter in her ITU bed every day, listening to the machines and the computers that kept her alive and monitored her condition. They stayed there, and they waited for a sign of life, and they prayed.
Wendy had always believed in God. Her parents were Methodist, from somewhere out in the Valleys where Sunday mornings were still reserved for threats of Hell and Damnation. She had moved to work at the university in Cardiff and Ewan had met her in a sandwich shop one lunchtime. They started seeing each other, but it took him six months of bloody hard work to get her into bed, and afterwards she had cried because she had sinned. Ewan had held her then, and told her that he loved her and known that this time he meant it. They had married in a Cardiff church – Ewan always suspected that she felt too sullied by premarital sex to return to her home chapel – but Wendy never lost her commitment to God. Ewan never understood it – his family were nothing more than Christmas Christians. But for seven days, as he watched his little girl battle death, Wendy’s faith kept him going.
But Alison came out of the coma. She survived. He didn’t know if it was a miracle, medical science, or if his daughter simply had one kick-ass will to live. As she had lain in the coma, Wendy had told him that Alison had died at the scene of the crash for five minutes, but that the paramedics had brought her back. She had told him this to reassure him that their daughter was a fighter and that, if she had beaten death once, then she could survive the coma and would come back to them.
Ewan didn’t care what had brought his daughter back from death – whether it had been God, science or voodoo – he just had his little girl back, and nothing else in the world mattered.
If this had been a show on TV, the tearful mum and dad that had watched over their still daughter for so long would have gone home with their miracle child as the credits rolled, and the audience would go put the kettle on with a warm glow in their stomach and maybe a little moisture in their eye. They would never stop to think about how things could turn to shit.
It started a couple of weeks later, when Wendy asked her daughter what she remembered about the crash. That wasn’t what she really wanted to know, of course. Wendy had talked to Ewan late at night after Alison had gone to sleep, cuddled up to Mr Pickle in bed. Her daughter had died and now to Wendy – who had her daughter safe in bed upstairs and not in an undersized coffin beneath the ground – that was no longer something horrific, but a marvel. Alison had died and come back, and Wendy had read stories of the things that people had seen on the Other Side. It wasn’t that her faith in the Afterlife needed confirmation, but her daughter had been in the presence of the Divine – who wouldn’t want to know what that was like?
But Wendy hadn’t liked what she heard.
That there was nothing beyond death but cold darkness. Ewan understood the devastation of Wendy’s world-view – more than that, her view of creation, of everything – and he tried to comfort her. He tried to tell her that maybe Alison was wrong. She was just a small child, after all. And she had gone through such a lot. Wendy couldn’t expect her to really remember what happened to her being – her soul, whatever she wanted to call it – as the medics had worked on getting her heart to work again next to the car wreck. And at first he had thought that Wendy had understood that, and had accepted his logical reasoning. But then he had come to realise that that wasn’t the case at all. He caught it in his wife’s eyes sometimes when she didn’t think he was looking, when she was watching Alison play with Mr Pickle.
Wendy hated their daughter.
More than that, she didn’t believe that it was their daughter. What had come back in Alison’s body was an agent of Satan, a demon that had come to destroy her faith by spreading lies about the end of hope.
The realisation that his wife was going mad and – more than that – that he couldn’t cope, was what led Ewan Lloyd to the bottle and, ultimately, to the edge of what was to become Besnik Lucca’s roof garden.
By that time Wendy was in hospital. It was a good place that had patience and cared. It was also costing Ewan a fortune that he
couldn’t afford. Things had got completely out of control – his drinking had put his business into a spiral that was accelerated by the cost of helping his wife, which made him drink more… He was a drunk drowning in a whirlpool. And, just then, the sooner it sucked him into oblivion, the better. Wendy was getting better, and Alison didn’t seem to suspect anything of the truth about her mother’s absence, but his family was shattered beyond repair all the same – because he hadn’t been able to cope.
He knew they would all be better off without him. Wendy would land some good-looking bloke with a full head of hair and no beer belly – the kind of man she always should have been with – and Alison would get a stepfather who would be able to look after her properly. A real man who wouldn’t just try to drink himself out of any problem that reared its head.
At around seventy metres off the ground, the wind whipped at you even on a calm day, and Ewan had been standing on the edge of the construction for quite a while, summoning up the last pulse of courage to take that final step. As he had edged towards the ledge, he had actually hoped that the force of the wind and the bottle and a half of scotch that had got him up there in the first place would combine to remove that final difficult step from his plan. Typical of the loser that he was, he thought, he even wanted the wind to do the tough part. He had kind of hoped that a good gust of wind would just unbalance him and a couple of seconds later he’d be on the pavement below, splattered like a lost ice cream. He supposed that it would be a strawberry or a raspberry ice cream. Something with a lot of red in it, anyway.
But the wind hadn’t taken him to his death. Instead Besnik Lucca had stood at his side and offered him a second chance.
Ewan had never laid eyes on Lucca until that moment, but of course he had heard the name; he knew that he was the major individual investor in the SkyPoint project and that it was his money that had been giving him a headache on the day that had set his life on course for the wastepipe. In between the time Alison had come out of her coma and the beginning of his realisation that his wife was going crazy, Ewan had started to ask questions about that money, and about Lucca. The fact that he hadn’t found any satisfactory answers had, in its way, told him all he needed to know. The money was dirty; Lucca was a crook. Then his life had started to fall apart. And if the financial foundations of the SkyPoint job had also started to flake and crumble, everyone would have been buried in the rubble. So he had turned a blind eye to the financial irregularities, but he knew that Lucca had caught wind of his interest.
There had been a phone call.
It hadn’t come to the office, and it hadn’t been on his mobile. It had been at night, just after he had made sure Alison was OK in bed, as he did every night an hour or so after she had gone up. So it was around eight o’clock, and the phone in the hallway of his home started to ring.
None of his clients had his home number. If they needed to get him urgently outside of office hours then they had his mobile number, and he never turned that off. But Lucca had been sending him a message, and it wasn’t contained in the words he spoke down the phone.
Lucca had identified himself and had said he wanted to congratulate Ewan on the excellent work he was doing on the SkyPoint project. He was impressed by his diligence, he said. And also by his professional discretion. He hoped, he said, that Ewan would allow them both the opportunity to work together again in the future.
Ewan had understood every word that Lucca had not said.
I know where you live.
And when Lucca spoke into his ear as they stood together on the edge of oblivion above Cardiff Bay, Ewan recognised the accent immediately, and he felt the pressure of his hand on his shoulder.
He told Ewan that he could help him.
If he could not summon the courage to take his own life, Lucca would help him with the hand that he had placed on his shoulder.
Ewan looked down and saw that Lucca’s gleaming black shoes were even closer than his own were to the edge and the fall into the old docklands below. He also saw that Lucca’s other hand was extended towards him, as if he wanted Ewan to shake it.
Lucca told him that if he cared more for his family than he did for himself he would take the offered hand and he would work for him, and life would be good once again.
Ewan looked into Lucca’s black eyes and shook his hand, and knew that he was more truly lost than ever.
And now, a year later, he sat on a whore’s toilet seat with a broken ankle and his mobile phone in his hand, trying to reach the Devil.
Lucca picked up just as Ewan was about to give up, ready to smash the phone against the bathroom’s granite flooring.
‘Hello, Ewan. Where are you?’
‘What?’ Ewan snarled. He was hurting and he was angry. Angrier with Lucca than he knew he had any sense to be. ‘Don’t tell me you can’t bloody see me!’
Ewan knew all of Lucca’s secrets. Not just the financial ones. He also knew about the cameras, even the one that watched his wife undress. When the Devil took your soul, he took everything else, too. And Lucca knew those secrets were safe with Ewan Lloyd. Weak men knew who their friends were and, if they forgot, their disposal was easy. A weak man who was also wise knew that, which was why he trusted Ewan Lloyd.
Lucca didn’t respond to Ewan’s anger, he said nothing and waited for the injured man to gather his wits.
‘I’m on the eleventh floor,’ he said in the end, trying to keep his voice low – the last thing he needed was that Torchwood guy catching him on the phone to Lucca. ‘The whore’s flat.’ Ewan knew all about Marion Blake. He knew a lot of things about everyone that moved in to SkyPoint. Accountancy for Besnik Lucca covered a wide range of fields.
‘Who is with you?’ Lucca asked.
‘Wendy and Alison. Marion. And the man with the Jap wife. Only I think that was some sort of cover.’
‘Ewan, you are so perceptive,’ Lucca taunted down the phone line.
‘What the hell is going on, Besnik? Who are these people and what the hell is this talk about something being on the loose here? Ryan Freeman says something came through the wall and took his wife!’
‘Everything is under control,’ Lucca purred.
‘Listen, Besnik, if there’s anything dangerous up here, I want to get my wife and daughter out of here. You owe me that much.’
‘I owe you?’ Lucca said it slowly, disbelieving, without humour.
Ewan pushed a hand over his head, it came away wet with sweat and, for the first time in months, he needed a drink. ‘I just want my little girl safe,’ he said.
It went quiet on the other end of the line. For a long time Ewan thought he had pushed it too far. And Besnik Lucca wasn’t the kind of man that you pushed at all.
Screw it, he thought. He didn’t care, didn’t care about anything except making sure Alison was safe. That was why he had refused to use the lifts. When the trouble had kicked off, he had known exactly what Lucca would do.
He knew all his secrets.
And Lucca knew him.
When he came back on the line, Lucca told Ewan exactly what he had to do if he wanted his help in getting Alison to safety.
And finally, though he had never meant to, Ewan threw up.
TWENTY-ONE
‘Get behind me!’ Ianto shouted. ‘Get behind me, now!’
As he spoke, he pulled his automatic and wondered what the hell he was going to do with it. The thing that was coming through the roof of the elevator looked like slime, a glittering slime that undulated and glowed and spread across the ceiling.
It didn’t look like bullets would do anything but slip through it. But he fired anyway.
The bang of the gun was deafening in the confinement of the elevator cabin. The sound waves slammed off the mirrored walls and hit him in the ears like hammer blows.
As he’d expected, the four bullets he fired punched holes in the ceiling, but did nothing to the creature that clung to it.
It did encourage Andrew and Simon to do what he’
d told them, however, and they crowded behind him in a corner of the elevator – not that it was going to do any of them any good, and they all knew it.
Ryan had stayed where he was, crumpled on the floor, the slightest inclination of his head was the only suggestion that he was aware that anything at all had changed – never mind the cabin being invaded by some oozing alien.
‘Jesus Christ! What is it?’ Andrew gasped behind Ianto.
‘What does it matter?’ came pragmatic Simon. ‘We’re dead.’
Ianto stared at the thing that clung to the ceiling. It had no eyes, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were watching each other. His mind raced, trying to think of something he could do. He knew there was nothing. Instead, he tried to think of something that would make the last moments more bearable. He thought of Jack.
The creature began to slide down the far corner of the cabin, collecting there.
Ianto wondered how death would feel, if it was as bad as Owen said it was. It hadn’t only been Owen, of course. Before him they had brought people back with the first resurrection glove. Only ever for two minutes. But they never said anything about angels and harps or pearly gates. And as Ianto had watched their time run out on his pocket watch, they had never wanted to go back there.
He watched the creature slide down the wall of the elevator and thought that there wouldn’t be much left of him to resurrect, even if they still had one of the gloves.
He kind of wished he’d had time for one more cup of coffee.
Then Ryan pulled his shivering body off the floor and threw himself at the creature, screaming his wife’s name.
There wasn’t time to pull him back. And what would have been the point?
Ryan seemed to sink into the creature and as Ianto watched they could see him screaming, but heard nothing – he got the impression that he wasn’t even there with them any more, but that what they were seeing was some sort of image being transmitted from another place. And then the whole thing drew back out through the wall leaving no trace of itself, or the man that it had taken.
